Presenting Nature

Cover

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Overview

Stewardship

Design Ethic Origins
(1916-1927)

Design Policy & Process
(1916-1927)

Western Field Office
(1927-1932)

Park Planning

Decade of Expansion
(1933-1942)

State Parks
(1933-1942)

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942

IV. THE WORK OF THE WESTERN FIELD OFFICE, 1927 TO 1932 (continued)

DESIGN OF PARK ROADS (continued)

SCENIC OVERLOOKS

The development of scenic overlooks on national park roads grew out of Downing's nineteenth-century romantic notions on viewpoints and vistas. Overlooks were an important feature of park roads, providing a stopping and resting place and affording visitors spectacular, and often panoramic, views. They ranged from simple widened areas along the road where traffic could pull over and stop to larger terraces accommodating sizable parking areas with curbing, sidewalks, and protective guardrails. They could be combined with paths and trails that allowed the visitor to ascend a peak or outcrop for a better view or to descend to a scenic waterfall or gorge.

Overlooks on park roads were derivatives of the terrace form used by landscape architects. Henry Hubbard defined two types of terraces: those that were architectural objects of simple shape fitted to a site as the base of a structure of architectural interest and those that were outdoor areas dominating a view. It was the latter type that park landscape architects incorporated into the design of park roads. Terraces offered designers endless possibilities for presenting views to the best advantage. Hubbard urged landscape designers to explore this form, drawing attention to the retaining wall or bank that created a boundary between the structure and its surroundings and allowed a rise in elevation that could command a view over the surrounding area and "perhaps much further afield." [34]

The first overlooks were designed on existing plateaulike promontories of land. They were bounded by curtainlike parapet walls that conformed to the natural shape of the promontory. One of the earliest overlooks of this type was the Sunrise Ridge Loop (1929-1930) on Mount Rainier's Yakima Park Road. It provided both an aesthetic and engineering solution along a steep incline where it was necessary for the road to shift direction to continue smoothly uphill. The overlook was essentially a switchback opened up to form a sweeping loop and afford panoramic views and a stopping point along the incline. The center of the loop was reserved for parking. Visitors crossed the road to the viewing area where a stonemasonry guardrail separated them from the steep slopes beyond the overlook. The monotonous line of the guardrail was relieved by crenulating piers that echoed the majestic form of the nearby mountain peak.

The idea of a walkway with a protective guardrail that followed the natural contour of the land was applied to curvilinear paths and trails along scenic rims such as the South Rim of the Grand Canyon or Rim Village at Crater Lake. Guardrails of masonry piers and log cross timbers were installed as early as 1920 along the Canyon of the Yellowstone. By the late 1920s such structures were called promenades and equipped with viewing bays, water fountains, and dust-free walkways that connected with parking areas, nearby buildings, and nature trails. Masonry and log guardrails, following the specifications used in road projects, were also used in precipitous locations along hiking and bridle trails, such as the tunnel approach along the Ptarmigan Trail in Glacier National Park.

The Loop at Sunrise Ridge on the Yakima Park Road, Mount Rainier National Park, presented spectacular views of the Cascade Mountains, north to Canada and south to Oregon. The loop was an enlarged switchback where the road turned sharply and proceeded upward. Inside the loop was a parking area. Outside, following the shape of the site, were sidewalks flanked by stonemasonry guardrail of the 'mountain' type that formed naturalistic viewing hays and a panorama of scenic views. (National Park service Historic Photography Collection)

The Wawona Tunnel at Yosemite, constructed in the early 1930s, represents the most ambitious precedent for creating an artificial terrace. Here the terrace was created by fill excavated from the 4,200-foot tunnel, shaped into a naturalistic curvilinear form, and retained by a hand-laid revetment wall of weathered local stone. The terrace was separated from the roadway by an island of plantings that helped control the flow of traffic on and off the road. It was bound by a curtainlike masonry parapet of local rock that was separated from the parking area by curbing of roughly cut stone and a sidewalk. Depending on their location, such artificial terraces would either use a dry-laid retaining wall or be gradually sloped and planted to adjust the fill to the surrounding terrain.

Many variations of the two basic types—those following the natural contours of a site and those naturalistically created from earth fill—were built along roads in both eastern and western parks. The most extensive development of scenic overlooks occurred in the park drives and parkways of the eastern parks, particularly Shenandoah's Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway of the 1930s, where scenic overlooks and vistas at frequent intervals became an integral and essential aspect of the park experience and offered visitors a sequential panorama of scenery.

LOOP DEVELOPMENTS, INTERSECTIONS, AND GRADE SEPARATIONS

Although the landscape architects had collaborated on the location of roads and the design of bridges and guardrails since 1920, in 1928 they began to design parking areas and loop developments as well. These loop developments became characteristic of the park road systems and would have many applications in the overall design of national and state parks. Derived from the circular drives of pleasure grounds and estates in the English gardening tradition and functioning like the traffic circles of urban parkways, a loop development made it possible to lead automobiles on and off a main road without altering the flow of traffic and without introducing right angles and tangents into the design of a road. Such a device allowed designers to divert traffic for scenic or other purposes. In the case of parking areas at overlooks or campgrounds, they allowed traffic to return to the main road without stopping, backing up, or making sharp turns. Loops were often developed as side or spur roads leading to important viewpoints or to parking, sidewalks and paths, and comfort facilities. Ernest Davidson incorporated the loop in his design for the Yakima Park Road in order to convert an undesirable switchback into a lovely and spectacular viewpoint on Sunrise Ridge, where in clear weather one could see north to Canada and south to the Cascade Range of Oregon. He further used this device to disperse the visitors to several points at Yakima Park by way of side roads and spurs. Gilmore Clarke used the loop to channel traffic through Mammoth Hot Springs and to form the nucleus of his master plan for this heavily trafficked area of Yellowstone. Park designers adopted it for campgrounds and picnic areas as well as for parking areas adjacent to scenic points of interest, such as Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite and Artist's Point at Yellowstone.

Intersections of roads and trails caused park designers special concern and were deliberately avoided wherever possible. Where unavoidable, they were carefully designed according to the conventions of the English gardening tradition. The wye intersection with its divided roadway and central island became the standard for intersections where side or spur roads met a main park road. At these points, travelers needed directions, visibility, and safe passage. Signs, curbing, parking areas, and plantings were incorporated into these designs to provide for safety and to blend the roadway into the surrounding woodlands or meadows.

The wye enabled traffic to leave the main road without coming to a stop and without having to turn at a right angle, interrupting the flow of traffic and slowing forward momentum. Traffic entering the main road was likewise able to merge without making an abrupt turn. This convention had been used on limited-access roads and parkways. Henry Hubbard advocated the wye as a solution for maintaining the flow and safety of travel and reducing the amount of road surface that detracted from the natural scene. He recommended that intersecting roads approach each other by gentle curves and that islands be formed between the branches of the roads and be covered with low plantings to conceal any undue amount of road surface. [35]

Customarily road and trail systems in national parks were developed so that there was little need for intersections or grade separations to carry one form of traffic over the other. Yosemite Valley was one place in the national parks, however, where pedestrian and automobile traffic came into conflict and where it was impossible to route a bridle trail or footpath so that it would not cross a roadway. Here arches were incorporated into bridge designs to allow pedestrians or those riding horseback to pass underneath. Another notable grade separation was the east entrance to Mount Rainier; constructed of stone and large logs, it was built to carry the long-distance Cascade (later Pacific) Crest Trail across the road at Naches Pass. It also served as a boundary marker and entry gate between the adjoining national forest and the park.

DEVELOPMENT OF STANDARDS FOR MASONRY

The uniform specifications introduced by Vint's office in 1929 included standards for the design of guardrails, bridges, and culverts along park roads and trails. These standards had evolved in the 1920s as Hull, Vint, Davidson, and others endeavored to instruct the engineers and contractors of the Bureau of Public Roads on techniques for stonemasonry that harmonized and blended with the natural setting. Specifications had been written into contracts and were listed on the drawings for bridges and guardrails as early as 1928. The success of harmonization depended on the freehand lines and rusticity of the roughly cut stone, the avoidance of right angles and straight lines, the integration of battered stone walls into the contours of adjoining slopes and rock formations, and the curvature of the roadway and adjoining walls to follow natural contours.

The nature of manmade stonework directly influenced the extent to which a structure appeared naturalistic and blended harmoniously into the natural setting. The random pattern, variegated natural colors, and irregular lines that resulted from using natural boulders or exposing the weathered surfaces of split stones and from deeply incising mortar joints created a camouflaged surface. When viewed from afar, the artificial rockwork was indistinguishable from the natural outcropping from which it emerged. The masonry specifications worked out by Hull and Vint represented a pragmatic twentieth-century application of the nineteenth century principles for picturesque rockwork that Downing, Hubbard, and Parsons had promoted.

The special provisions for the stonework in guardrails and bridges were in keeping with the general principles that straight lines and right angles were to be avoided in the design of park structures. The provisions enabled the landscape engineer to select the source of stone to be used and prescribe the size and shape of rocks to be used. They required that finished stonework "present a good architectural appearance" and that rubble masonry be constructed by experienced workmen. Larger stones were to be placed at the base of the guardrail or bridge, and extra large ones at the corners. Only weathered and moss- or lichen-covered surfaces were to be visible. The nesting or bunching of small rocks was to be avoided. Stones were to be laid in courses in such a way that no four corners were contiguous, thus ensuring a random, irregular, and informal appearance. Joints were to be angular and no greater than one inch wide. Guardrails were to conform to standard plans and no joints in the top course were to be parallel with the horizontal line of the structure. The top of exposed walls was to be uniformly even with variations up to one-half inch allowed to avoid the appearance of a straight line. The provisions also required that drainage openings, called weep holes, be included in all stone walls. [36]

GUARDRAILS

In the national parks, both log and stone were used in the construction of guardrails designed to harmonize with the natural setting. Customarily log guardrails were built in forested areas, and masonry ones were built in open, rugged, steep, or mountainous areas.

Several designs for masonry guardrails had been developed in the mid-1920s for work on roads such as the El Portal Road in Yosemite and Going-to-the-Sun Highway in Glacier. Guardrails were also used along trails such as the Ptarmigan Trail in Glacier and the promenade at Crater Lake's Rim Village. These eighteen-inch stone walls were all designed for the protection of visitors, whether in automobile, on horseback, or on foot. The same attention to detail in masonry that marked the development of park bridges guided the specifications and designs for these walls and ensured both safety and harmonization. The irregularity of the stonework pattern, the avoidance of right angles and straight lines in the setting of stones, and the elimination of parallel joints along the top course provided a camouflage effect whereby native stone blended with the surrounding setting. Functional features for curbing, drainage gutters, and sidewalks were incorporated into the designs for the basic guardrail.

Guardrails were essential for public safety along steep inclines of roadway and also protected visitors at overlooks. They were the counterparts of the parapets described by Hubbard as an essential component of terraces. Of the many types suggested by Hubbard and commonly used in public parks—balustrade, pierced wall, post and panel, lattice log construction, and others—the park service designers settled upon two simple types: a malleable, masonry curtain wall of native stone and a more rigid and less permanent log structure of roughly hewn log posts and cross rails. [37]

One of the existing prototypes Daniel Hull examined in the 1920s was the guardrail designed for the Palisades Interstate Park by William Welch. Its use at the Storm King Highway along the Hudson was well known and had been published in the 1924 portfolio American Landscape Architecture. It featured a split-stone wall with an irregular crown created by small stones set on end in rows parallel to the face of the wall. This design was rejected for use in the national parks by the Commission of Fine Arts, perhaps because of its dated character. There was much discussion about the character of masonry during the construction of guardrails along Yosemite's El Portal Road in 1926, mainly between commission landscape architect James Greenleaf and Daniel Hull, before a simple linear parapet without any coping was decided upon. The guardrail was made of irregularly shaped and weathered stones having no right angles or straight lines. The lines of the guardrail derived from the irregularity of horizontally laid stones arranged in a random pattern with deeply incised mortar.

Early in 1928, Vint issued standardized designs for six types of stone guardrails and five types of wood and-log guardrails for national park road projects. These were superseded by new drawings a year later. Drawn by Davidson and approved by Vint, the new sheets included designs for six stone guardrails and seven log or wood guardrails. The designs gave patterns for the arrangement of logs or the placement of stone in measured plans, elevations, and sections. They were based on the successful designs that had been developed in the mid-1920s for roads such as Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Highway, Yosemite's El Portal Road, and Mount Rainier's Yakima Park Road.

Rusticity, irregularity, and native materials marked the overall character of stone guardrails. The designs were simple and consisted of a solid wall without the coping, openings, or ornamentation characteristic of their urban counterparts. Masonry was laid in such a way that straight lines and right angles were avoided and the qualities of continuity, irregularity, and randomness dominated. The lines of demarcation between courses were obscured by the irregular shapes and moss- and lichen-covered surfaces of the stones and the deeply incised mortar. The walls retained the random character and rough, irregular forms of naturally found boulders or weathered outcrops. Most of the designs were variations on masonry walls in which the stones were irregular in shape and laid horizontally. The dimensions and arrangement of stones were further refined in 1929 drawings. The basic designs made standardization possible while allowing for a number of variations for different field conditions, uses, and needs. One design even had a space for a walk or for planting between the face of the wall and the curb. Some included combination wall and curbs with pavement for a sidewalk; others had end buttresses or wide crenulating piers, five to six feet in length, spaced at six- or twelve-foot intervals to avoid a monotonous line and add to the overall irregularity of the linear surface. The end walls of others were flared or battered to suit local field conditions. New in the 1929 standards was a stone guardrail having a crenulation in the shape of a peaked mountain every fourteen feet. This was the guardrail Davidson developed for the Sunrise Ridge Loop and Yakima Park Road. The design used for the Cadillac Mountain Road at Acadia, which consisted of unjoined, horizontally laid granite blocks embedded in the earth, was omitted from the 1929 sheet.

Within the standard set of proportions for eighteen- and twenty-four-inch walls, irregularity and variation were encouraged. Certain rules of joining were established to ensure informality of design and harmonization by blending. The standard designs made it possible for Vint and his staff to specify on master plans, contract specifications, and drawings the type of guardrail suitable for particular locations within each park. In the 1930s, it became standard practice to include a sheet in the master plans for each park showing the guardrail designs recommended for the park; these included diagrams for treating the slopes, culvert designs, and various techniques of joining and cutting logs for construction. [38]

To ease the monotony of long linear expanses of guardrail, the National Park designers introduced crenulating piers. In this they followed Hubbard's advice that where a long straight run of terrace wall might become monotonous, it be "broken by projections which offer particularly good viewpoints and which serve some subordinate purpose of their own as objects in the design." The crenulating piers became a distinctive aspect of the masonry work of the National Park Service. They appeared along many park roads and varied from Davidson's "mountain" form at Mount Rainier to broader, more lozengelike horizontal forms along Rocky Mountain's Trail Ridge Road. The design of guardrails allowed for elaboration for functional purposes, such as the incorporation of water fountains, including one at Crater Lake whose bowl formed the shape of Crater Lake with a projecting Wizard Island. In the mountain type used at Mount Rainier, the pier consisted of a single stone shaped to a blunt point imitating a mountain peak. Only the weathered or lichen-covered surfaces of stones were to be exposed, perpetuating an aesthetic quality of the rustic that had come from Downing and was promoted by landscape architects such as Hubbard and Parsons. [39]

In 1942, the Branch of Plans and Designs issued simplified designs for standard guardrails, distinguishing between blocky and stratified types to better accommodate differences in stone character (these differences depended on whether the stones were best divided into blocks, like igneous or metamorphic rock such as granite, or into stratified layers, like limestone). More detailed plans for log guardrails were also issued at this time. [40]

When an Eastern Office was established in 1930 under the supervision of Charles Peterson, a variety of new designs for stone and log guardrails were developed. These plans closely resembled the local traditions of farm walls yet fulfilled the need for guarding the gentler inclines of park roads in the East. These walls would become characteristic of guardrails along the parkways at Yorktown, Mount Vernon, and Shenandoah. They would fulfill the requirements that right angles and straight lines be avoided, that workmanship be high, and that stones be carefully chosen to achieve a unified and harmonious appearance.

Stone curbing was an integral part of stone walls, and at overlooks walls were accompanied by sidewalks in a single unified design. These improvements had important applications in the New Deal era, when labor and funds became available to improve park villages and scenic attractions. Made from local materials of stone and log, naturalistic curbing and sidewalks began to appear at parking areas, overlooks, ranger stations, museums, and other park buildings. Curbing of a single type was installed throughout park villages such at Grand Canyon Village and Yosemite Village. Rustic curbing, made from unfinished, peeled, and knotted logs or roughly cut native stone, was installed to bound parking areas. Curving paths were graded and paved with crushed stone and gravel from native rock. Edging of native stone or rough-cut peeled logs laid end-to-end was installed along many pathways in an effort to keep visitors on the designated pathways. These improvements greatly improved the appearance of park areas and reduced the wear and tear of traffic on the fragile natural environment. At Yosemite Village, boulders embedded in the earth in the mid-1920s to delineate the parking plaza and valley roadways, were removed in the 1930s and replaced by continuous sections of partially embedded log curbing that were less conspicuous.

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